Advances in electronic component and circuit board design have in many respects out-paced advances in electronic cooling technology. However, the development of spray cooling technology can provide an alternative to the more common use of fans and forced air convection cooling. Spray cooling technology is capable of removing heat more rapidly than air-cooling technology, in part because of the heat absorbed by the coolant during the phase-change. Spray cooling technology is made more efficient by atomizers which are designed and configured to maximize the heat transfer effectiveness and surface area of the coolant.
Unfortunately, atomizer technology has failed to produce atomizers having a structure that is suited to economical production of the large numbers of atomizers needed to most efficiently cool electronic components or other heat producing devices. Large numbers of atomizers, each producing large numbers of droplets having extremely small diameters, are required for most efficient cooling. A smaller number of larger atomizers would, as a result of their geometry, produce larger droplets having a correspondingly lower evaporation rate and lower cooling effectiveness.
A known type of atomizer is formed from a two-layer laminate that is inserted into discrete supporting members which can be press-fit or threaded into a housing, plate or further supporting member. The two-layer laminate may be formed by chemically etching from both sides of each layer, thereby forming swirlers with associated swirl feed ports and a discharge aperture.
Such atomizers are not well suited for mass production due to the requirement of a discrete supporting member associated with each atomizer. Additionally, there is the cost of inserting the atomizer into the discrete supporting member and the cost of inserting the discrete supporting member into some further supporting member by press-fit, threading or other means.
A further problem inherent with the structures used to manufacture known atomizers, and the manufacturing processes, is the inability to control the dimensions of the component elements of the atomizer precisely enough to allow the development of design rules to control the trajectory and distribution of the spray output.
What is needed, therefore, is an atomizer having structural characteristics that obviates the need to provide each atomizer with a discrete supporting member, and therefore which does not require that the discrete supporting member be attached to a further supporting structure. A further need is for an atomizer having structural characteristics that better supports very tight control over the geometric dimensions and relationships of the component parts of individual atomizers, thereby allowing better control over the discharged spray.